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Memetics, Genetics, and Environmental History

Preliminary Unified Hypothesis of Environmental Degradation

The work presented in these papers is an ecosocionomic
investigation of the ‘same-other paradox’, a state of affairs that as far as I
know has dominated world history from time immemorial. My interest stems from
prior work in the field of political ecologics. For some time I had been
studying something I call ecocide: the irrational human tendency to burn down
the house, to bite the hand that feeds, to kill the goose that lays the golden
eggs: the inability to cooperate for the preservation of the global commons. I
believe this tendency follows a very long arc in human pre- and recorded
history that has seen human mythological systems shift from a looking-around
mode (animism) to a looking-up mode (celestialism). In the process, the human’s
place in the comsos has been gradually leaving the firmness of earth and
drifting up towards the heavens. This has been the trajectory until more recent
times when the prevalent mode has been the collapse of all mythological systems
(modernism), the absence of a metaphysics, hyper-individualism, and a kind of
randomly chaotic view of things. The environmental consequences of this arc has
been a greater and greater detachment from the natural world and especially
those parts of nature known as the global commons-- a growing view of nature as
‘other’ rather than ‘self’. The cultural transmission of this view forms the
memetic aspect of the unified theory of environmental degradation.

The global commons are the parts and systems of our
planet that nobody owns outright: our oceans, our atmosphere, our chemical
cycles (e.g., water, carbon, nitrogen, etc.), our biological diversity. These
things literally keep us alive. They are also the things that make life
beautiful and especially worth living. More primitive cultures tended to view
these things as Gods. If we consider them at all, they are usually viewed as
obstacles to economic growth. We cannot turn back time for a return to earlier
world views. Instead we must develop a new world view, arisen from our current
states of knowledge and an objective perception of geophysical conditions as
they exist today. The future view must
show us how to live in harmony with the natural world and each other
instead of apart. This will require deep understandings of the earth’s
biogeochemical systems and of human needs and behavior. Inevitably it will also
involve the adoption, conscious or otherwise, of a metaphysics based on these
understandings. From this metaphysics will follow all else, all culture, all
politics, all economics, all art, all science.

What are the impediments preventing such a program
from emerging? I, and many other observers, have discerned a combination of
factors such as an ignorance of scientific knowledge, an overestimation of
human technological prowess, a refusal to admit that natural resources are
limited, a human exceptionalism (laws of nature do not apply to humans), a rampant
and unbridled individualist ethic, among others, that help explain and
perpetuate the ecocidal tendency. These are all overt factors: they can be
measured by social scientists using statistics. My exploration of the question
of impediments has lead in recent years towards the investigation of a deeper
force, driving us blindly towards these more overt manifestations of ecocide, a
subliminal fuel feeding our sociopolitical choices and, generally, overwhelming
global cooperative effort, particularly regarding the environmental commons.

Under this light, several years ago I decided to
explore the burgeoning field of ancestral genetics in the context of ecocide. I
asked whether there might be a connection between ancestral genetic identity
and today’s global environmental anomie. I began by gathering data and looking
for relationships. In order to illumine such a connection I would need to first
find a way to define ancestral genetic identity and then a way to measure
environmental behaviors according to these identities. It is my good luck that
an amazing amount of data in both these areas has been published by a truly
admirable phalanx of researchers in recent years. I was able to pluck these
marvelous results and blend them into the ecosocionomic model I now present.

As shown on the pages of these materials, the
evidence shows that certain genetic branches of the human family tree have
essentially been expanding their use and possession of the Earth’s natural
resources while other branches have seen their portions stagnating or
dwindling. I theorize that this mechanism whereby one or more genetic branches
take and use natural resources while excluding genetic cousins from these same
resources has, thus far, taken priority in driving human history—eclipsing impulses
to cooperate for the good of the common environment. This mechanism may be
manifested superficially in many ways: as political ideology, religious fervor,
real-economik or politik, or any number of other sociopolitically recognizable
constructs.

These concepts are, in the end, only masks obscuring
the haplocentric face of humanity. Much like the movement towards seeing nature
as an ‘other’ has come the division of genetically different into groups of
‘other’ and ‘self’, with the same disastrous effects. I hasten to emphasize
that the haplocentric force is not always expressed by direct annihilation—such
as carried out by Nazis in Europe,
Western Europeans in the New World, Hutus in Rwanda, or Serbs in Srebernica, to
name only a few of the more recently infamous examples. Haplocentrism can also
be expressed over millennial epochs, in ‘humane’ ways, and very gradually over
time. ‘Soft’ genocide is carried out not by direct extermination but by subtle
implementation. Slowly, over millenia, certain branches are limited by others
from having access to essential resources which in turn diminishes population
growth and viability and eventually leads to the same net result. It is the
force that seems to produce an endless state of war between branches of the family
tree, directly or by proxy. It is possible to view most violent conflicts as
battles between haplogroups or sub-haplogroups. Thirdly, at the biological level, a problem called 'undercrowding' (aka the Allee effect) is likely impairing individual and group fitness in diminishing haplogroup populations. Haplocentric social structures
form the bio-genetic aspect of the unified theory of environmental degradation.

Human haplocentric tendencies have persisted for a
very long time. If one views our species’s current domination of the planet
then it must be said that as a survival strategy, haplocentric competition has
been successful—at least for certain branches of the human family tree that now
proliferate the Earth. Some might even argue a biological law at work here, a
group selection with a genocidal dark-side. But like with the arc of human
metaphysics viewed earlier, I see ample evidence that, as a survival strategy,
haplocentric competition has outlived its usefulness. For a variety of reasons
that I have elucidated elsewhere it seems clear that if our species is to
persist beyond the meager 200ky since its inception (consider that Homo erectus
was around for 1.5my!), group selection must now adapt to the new conditions
surrounding us, by embarking upon a new survival path.

I have sketched here a theory of environmental history comprised
of a metaphysical arc towards ecocide which is in turn driven by a haplocentric
drive, likely of biological origin. Underlying both is the egotistical
elevation of a perceived ‘self’ over all ‘others’, or stated another way, the
elevation of the part over the whole. It is the egotistic ‘self’ that drives
the haplocentrism and it is haplocentrism that creates the state of social
disintegration underlying ecocide. I sincerely hope that further research will support the validity of this theory. This website is a small step in that direction.

As I have said, the continuation of prior
genetic-memetic tendencies will doubtless lead to greater and greater human
suffering and possibly even complete human self-destruction. The only way out
of here is for humanity to adopt a new metaphysic, a new world view based on
the unity between human and nature and between human branches of the
genealogical tree. It would be arrogant of me to suggest this new metaphysic as
an abstract concept; what I am suggesting is that the new metaphysic is an
adaptation necessary to guaranty the survival of the species. This is the work
of all sages, seers, visionaries, teachers, intellectuals, scientists, and
shamans. Anyone concerned with human progress and wellbeing should consider
their utmost calling the description, explication, dissemination, development,
and implementation of the truth of this essential unity.

I
believe that all people in the world are biological cousins, descending
ultimately from the same related ancestors. As related beings, I believe that
all the people of the world should cooperate to share and preserve the precious
biosphere and its products and resources. As I look around today though, I see
a world where people do not treat each other as blood relatives, where
political discourse tends to emphasize cultural differences and unrelatedness,
where certain groups of people seem to suffer more than others from disease,
starvation, war and other forms of destruction, where cooperation for the sake
of the greater good of the environment is nearly impossible. I am of those who
think that if we were to apply our skills and intelligence properly to that
end, this Earth could sustain us all for as long as the sun continues to shine.
It is my hope that this work may contribute in its own small way to the
transformation that will become biologically necessary if our species-tree is
to survive here on Earth.